Cupcakes

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Week Fifty: Eggnog Cupcakes with Cinnamon Rum Frosting

December 23, 2009 in Cupcakes, Internet Recipes, Weekly Baked Good | 1 comment

(This week’s cupcake recipe came from How To Eat a Cupcake and the frosting recipe came from The Busty Baker. Thanks, ladies!)

For the past six years, I’ve known Christmas is near just by opening my refrigerator. While I’m not looking, my husband will sneak a carton of eggnog into our grocery cart every week. And he’s the only one in our house who drinks it.

Yes, readers, I am a nog hater.

The running joke (which is actually 100% true) is that the very idea of eggnog is enough to engage my gag reflex. Have you ever looked at the ingredients in eggnog? There are uncooked eggs is that stuff! It probably doesn’t help that I don’t like milk either. There are just way too many things going on in eggnog that I do not like.

But baking with it? Count me in! It seems like the perfect baking ingredient. So I knew I’d have to find an eggnog cupcake recipe somewhere…and I found it at How to Eat a Cupcake!

The culprits:
Rum and Eggnog

The recipe was pretty straightforward, and included a nice douse of rum (because if you’re going to drink eggnog, it should probably be alcoholic…) and cinnamon. The batter tasted yummy:
Eggnog Cupcake batter

And I even found somewhat holiday-ish cupcake papers!
Cute cupcake papers

The batter went into the cupcake tins:
Eggnog Cupcakes

And when they came out, I frosted them with Cinnamon Rum Frosting (the same frosting I used for my Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes at Halloween). I dusted the tops with a little cinnamon:
Eggnog Cupcakes with Cinnamon Rum Frosting

Very pretty. I had one of these cupcakes right after I baked them, and thought it was okay. Not spectacular. It seemed a little dry. But I put them in the refrigerator and hoped for the best. I don’t know what happened in that refrigerator, but the next day these cupcakes were ah-mazing. They looked amazing, they smelled amazing and they tasted amazing. A few of my co-workers said this cupcake edged out the Tarte Tatin with Carmelized Apple Cupcake as their favorite. One of the account executives took a cupcake and sniffed it experimentally, then looked at me in amazement and said, “It smells like a Yankee Candle!”

It’s that frosting, I tell ya’. That frosting could save a burnt-black cookie.

Two more weeks, two more weeks, eek! This week I’m baking a Grasshopper Pie for my sister-in-law’s Christmas Eve party. And I still haven’t made a decision on the final project. I’ve got two ideas in mind, but both could prove to be beyond my budget. I’ll have to put some more thought into it. I feel like it needs to be something spectacular, seeing as how it’s The End!!!

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Week Forty-Five: Chocolate Malt Cupcakes

November 20, 2009 in "Cupcakes Galore", Cupcakes, Weekly Baked Good | 1 comment

(This week’s recipe came from “Cupcakes Galore!” by Gail Wagman.)

For Halloween, I wanted to bake something that would invoke childhood. Halloween, no matter how old you are, is always about dressing up and candy. And when you’re older, booze. So when I saw the Chocolate Malt Cupcake in Gail Wagman’s cookbook, I knew I had to give it a try.

The recipe started off with an incredibly light cupcake batter that included Ovaltine. (“Be…sure…to…drink…your…Ovaltine? A crummy commercial?”). This batter is so light that it’s scary. It seems more like frosting than batter. Getting it into the cupcake tins was kind of a nightmare:
Chocolate Malt Cupcakes

Chocolate Malt Cupcakes

They baked up fine, if a little fragile. Light cupcakes require a really light hand, which I sometimes don’t have. It’s why I like heartier fare:
Chocolate Malt Cupcakes

The recipe included crushed Whoppers candy in the batter, which I wasn’t a fan of. I feel like the Ovaltine got the malt aspect across just fine. The other weird thing was that the cupcake papers started pulling away from the cupcakes! I think it’s because the batter was so light that it didn’t even stick to the papers. Weird.

The frosting was much easier. And tasty!!! Chocolate malt is actually a pretty good flavor when it’s not on the inside of a Whopper and all crunchy:
Chocolate Malt Frosting

To make these the ultimate in Halloween cupcakes, I had to top them with candy! I picked up some miniature candy bars at the grocery store and topped each cupcake with a candy:
Candy wrappers

Chocolate Malt Cupcakes

These went over very well at work. I carried them around to different offices and forced people to say, “Trick or treat.”

I also made some Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes with Cinnamon Rum Frosting (Danae over at The Busty Baker gave me the recipe for that delicious, delicious frosting) to take to my sister-in-law’s Halloween Party. They were also a success, but I neglected to take photos of the process. This is all I’ve got:
Pumpkin Spice Cupcakes with Cinnamon Rum Frosting

(I ran out of frosting for those last two cupcakes, so they just got some powdered sugar.)

Next up, a Free Form Apple Tart!

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Week Forty-Four: Apple Tarte Tatin Cupcakes

November 20, 2009 in "Cupcakes Galore", Cupcakes, Weekly Baked Good | Comments closed

(This week’s recipe came from “Cupcakes Galore!” by Gail Wagman.)

I’m sooo behind! Eek! My job’s kept me really busy (I started daytime hours, so while I have a more normal schedule, it also means I have more time to read, watch TV or play video games rather than update my blog). But fear not, I haven’t missed a week of baking.

A few weeks ago, I made Apple Tarte Tatin Cupcakes. This is another cheater post, as I made these earlier this year to take on TV with me when Carmen Owens and I pimped CupcakeCampColumbus on a morning show. But these cupcakes didn’t really get their due, and I think they’re pretty fantastic, so here they are again!

The cake part of this cupcake is a pretty straightforward brown sugar cake:
Apple Tarte Tartin cupcake batter

The cool part comes with the apples:
Apples for Tarte Tatin cupcakes

The apples are sliced into 16 pieces and then fried in butter in a skillet. Tip: Make sure you get firm apples. I think I got Braeburns or something, but they started falling apart as soon as they hit the pan. I managed to salvage enough for the cupcakes, but it was a pain!
Apples for Tarte Tatin cupcakes

Carmelizing some apples

Once the apples had caramelized with butter and sugar, they were placed on top of the cooled cupcakes:
Tarte Tatin cupcakes with Carmelized Apples

Meanwhile, I whipped up some caramel to drizzle over the apples. This caramel never quite thins out the way I think it should…it stays very thick and starts to harden as soon as it’s removed from the heat. But it tastes amazing:
Caramel

Tarte Tatin cupcakes with Carmelized Apples

Tarte Tatin cupcakes with Carmelized Apples

My coworkers really enjoyed these cupcakes. The general opinion is that these are the best thing I’ve brought in so far.

Next up, Chocolate Malt Cupcakes for Halloween (posted just a few weeks too late!)

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Week Forty-Two: Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

October 12, 2009 in Cupcakes, Internet Recipes, Weekly Baked Good | 2 comments

(This recipe came from Culinary in the Desert.)

This is definitely a cheater post. I’ve made these Lemon Meringue Cupcakes three or four times in the course of this year, but I just love them so much. I”ve done double posts in the past, where I’ve made more than one thing in a week, so I think it all balances out. Someday I plan to make the lemon curd and just eat it over vanilla ice cream. Mmm mmm good.
Lemon Meringue Cupcake batter

The recipe begins with putting lemon juice, sugar, lemon zest and butter in the top of a double boiler and letting it simmer until the mixture is quite thick. Lemon zest is then mixed in and the mixture is covered with plastic wrap and left to chill in the fridge while the rest of the cupcakes come together.

The cupcakes are a fairly straightforward vanilla cupcake with a little lemon juice thrown in.
Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

Once the cupcakes are cool, a small cone is cut out of each and a couple of teaspoons of lemon curd are used to fill in the cone.
Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

Meanwhile, egg whites and cream of tartar are whipped together until foamy, and then granulated sugar is slowly added and whipped for about ten minutes, until the meringue becomes thick and fluffy.
Meringue

The cupcakes were then topped with a dollop of meringue and put on a cookie sheet to bake in the oven for an additional five or six minutes to put a little color on the meringue.
Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

Fantastic.
Lemon Meringue Cupcakes

My co-workers really enjoyed these. And I know that I did. These are my absolute favorite thing to eat that I make. In a couple of weeks, I will be making my absolute favorite thing to make. Mmmmm…

My next post will be about the glazed Pumpkin Cookies I just made this past Thursday, and then I’ll be caught up with the blog!

This post marks just ten more baked goods to make for this year-long project. Next year I plan to start something a little different, but more on that when it develops.

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Week Thirty-Nine: Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes

September 20, 2009 in Cupcakes, Internet Recipes, Weekly Baked Good | Comments closed

(This week’s recipe came from Epicurean.com.)

By now, I’ve spoiled my new co-workers something awful. Every Friday around 2 p.m. when I come in, they’re all waiting for me at the door, a hungry look in their eye and a little drool on their lips. I’ve already had a few requests come in, so this week I decided to honor one.

One of the guys at my work whom everyone calls Archives, asked me to bake something with pineapple in it. It’s a running joke at work that Archives is a little bonkers for pineapple (and ketchup, but that’s another story). When he asked, I immediately thought of pineapple upside down. I’ve never made one, but I figured doing a cupcake version couldn’t be that difficult.

I started with a few cans of pineapple chunks, which were drained of their liquid and then left to drain a little more on paper towels:
Pineapple

Next, I mixed up some light brown sugar with melted butter to make a syrup for what would become the tops of the cupcakes:
Brown sugar goo for Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes

This syrup was evenly distributed among the cupcake tins:
Brown Sugar goo for Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes

And then the pineapple chunks were decoratively placed on top of the syrup:
Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes

Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes

Finally, a pretty straightforward cupcake batter was mixed to be poured on top of the pineapple and syrup. The recipe didn’t even include vanilla, which I added to give it just a bit more flavor. The batter was poured on and the cupcakes were baked. Once they had baked, I cooled them in the tins for a few minutes and then wrestled with a cooling rack to flip the tins upside down and release the cakes. It worked for the most part. A few pineapple chunks stuck to the tins, so I had to pull them out and stick them back on the cakes:
Pineapple Upside Down Cupcake

Pineapple Upside Down Cupcakes

These weren’t my favorite cupcake…they were a little sticky and the cake was just a touch too bland. I had the option of using either milk or reserved pineapple juice for the batter, and I went with the milk. Maybe I should have went with the juice. At any rate, my co-workers gobbled them down and Archives told me that I should divorce my husband and marry him just so I could bake these all the time for him.

I’m pretty sure I’m going to stick with the husband I’ve got, but thanks for the compliment, Archives.

This week I baked Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Sandwich Cookies, which I will be posting about soon. I’m trying to get back on track and post things the weekend after I bake, but we’re still unpacking and getting settled, so my schedule is still wonky.

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